Question

I am using json_encode to convert PHP arrays to json and it seems to work fine except for one thing.

If I have a multi-dimensional array like this:

$person = array(
  'name' => 'John Smith',
  'age' => 36,
  'siblings' => array(
    'male' => array('John Doe','Mark'),
    'female' => array('Jane Doe','Jane Smith')
  )
);

I want it to put brackets around siblings but it only does it around male and female, i.e:

{
  "name":"John Smith",
  "age":36,
  "siblings":{
    "male":[
      "John Doe",
      "Mark"
    ],
    "female":[
      "Jane Doe",
      "Jane Smith"
    ]
  }
}

And I want "siblings":[{ ... }]

Is this possible?

Answer 1

$person = array(
  'name' => 'John Smith',
  'age' => 36,
  'siblings' => array(array(
    'male' => array('John Doe','Mark'),
    'female' => array('Jane Doe','Jane Smith')
  ))
);

This will give exactly what you want but it doesn’t make much sense